I watched How to Train Your Dragon yesterday and I really enjoyed it. I plan on reading the How to Train Your Dragon book series
Here’s the ones I’d recommend. Which ones would you add that I could read?
- Anne McCaffrey’s Pern series
. This is my favorite series. Pern is a world settled by humans who have lost technology and discovered dragons. I really liked the Mellony series which started with Dragonsong
. A young girl runs away runs away from home and discovers little dragons and a whole horde adopt her.
- Dragon’s Blood
by Jane Yolen. Another series about a boy, Jakkin, who is forced to work in the dragon pits where they train dragons to fight. He steals a dragon egg to train his own dragon.
- Eragon
. Most people know of this one from the movie. Eragon, a farm boy, finds a dragon egg and ends up bonding with the dragon. When his family is killed, he goes to war as the last dragon rider. My nine year old read the whole series. I have to admit I only read the first one. It’s written in a some what Tolkien style with a lot of history and names.
Others that have been recommended to me:
- Dragon’s Milk by Susan Fletcher
. This is about a girl who needs some dragon milk to save her sister’s life. She has to negotiate with the dragons.
What dragon books would you add to the list?
On youth side, Bruce Coville’s “Jeremy Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher” is also a story about a boy growing a dragon from an egg he buys in a strange magical shop. You have also K. A. Applegate’s “Everworld” for teens with the mythological Nordic’s dragon Nidhogg.
In more traditional fantasy, a good number of stories have dragon involved at some point. I’m thinking of George R. R. Martin’s “Song of Ice and Fire”, Robin Hobb’s “Royal Assassin” (+ side stories like “The Rain Wild Chronicles”), James Barclay’s “The Chronicles of The Raven” and Terry Goodking’s “Sword of Truth”.
Set in the world of Warcraft (Blizzard game), there is also Richard A. Knaak’s dragon trilogy started in “Day of the Dragon” and continued in the “War of the Ancients” trilogy (that also give some background about Warcraft III story). From Dungeons & Dragons RPG, you have Forgotten Realms novels which sometimes also feature dragons.
Song of Ice and Fire is a fantastic (ongoing) fantasy series. It’s probably a bit light on the dragons compared to other series, but the handling is quite excellent.
It is an extremely (graphically) adult fantasy series, though, so I would recommend reading it yourself before giving it to a reader younger than 15 or so.
On the movie side, I think you would particularly enjoy “The Flight of Dragons”. Slightly hard to find now, but worth it. Scientist gets pulled into a fantasy world to help save it. In particular, the geek in me really enjoyed the resulting deconstructions of how fantastic things work, such as how dragons breath fire.
That would be http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_Knight ‘Dragon Knight’ series by Gordon R. Dickson starting with ‘The Dragon and the George’, that I wanted to also recommend.
If we’re talking movies, I’ve always been partial to Dragonheart, though that could be 13-year-old Sandy talking. 😉
Michael Swanwick: Iron Dragon’s Daughter
The Temeraire series by Naomi Novik 🙂 Great series, especially if you enjoyed Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Suzanna Clark.
Sort of like an alternate earth history, except there’s dragons! Lots of them! All over the place! And it takes place during the Napoleonic conquests! 😀 Super fun!
@Chris – yes, I’d second that. There’s something terribly cool about mass naval battles being fought with draconic air support.
Robin McKinley’s _Dragonhaven_. A young boy lives in a dragon reservation and has to raise an orphan baby dragon in secret for legal/political reasons.
Dragonlance. Admittedly in the majority of the books the dragons aren’t largely in the spot light, they are a part of the stories, and none the less I’ve always found it a good series…
The Dragon of Prali by Davidson L. Haworth. Classical fantasy book with a dragon as the main character.